Chapter 3: Dead End

By the fourth day, the system had stopped talking to me like an assistant and started talking to me like an alarm clock with a grudge.

"Day four of five," it announced at six in the morning, while I was still drooling on my pillow. "Penalty clause activates in thirty hours."

"You said that yesterday," I mumbled. "And the day before that. You say it every time I blink."

"Then blink less."

I pulled the blanket over my head. It did not help, because the voice lived inside my skull, but it made me feel like I had at least tried. Over the next several hours the system found new ways to be unbearable. It counted down the minutes while I brushed my teeth. It sighed, actually sighed, when I took a detour to avoid Lucas in the hallway. During lunch it played a soft chime every thirty seconds until I put my fork down and told it, silently and with great feeling, to go jump off a bridge.

"Suggestion," it said, unbothered. "The department party tonight is an ideal opportunity. Crowded setting. Alcohol. Accidental contact will appear natural."

"Accidental contact," I repeated. "You make it sound so easy. Have you seen him? He looks at me like I'm a parking ticket."

"Then be a very small parking ticket."

I laughed out loud in the middle of the cafeteria and had to pretend I was coughing.

The party was in a rented loft near the river, the kind of place with exposed brick, string lights, and a bartender who looked like he resented every person in the room. Anthony pulled me through the door by my wrist, glowing, already waving at half the crowd. He had that effect on rooms. People turned toward him like plants toward a window, and I loved watching it happen, even as my stomach churned with guilt.

"You're quiet," he said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. "Nervous?"

"A little."

"Don't be." He kissed my temple, quick and warm. "I'll stay close. Promise."

That made it worse. I smiled at him and carried it with me like a stone in my pocket.

For almost an hour I did nothing useful. I ate three cheese cubes, listened to someone explain a cryptocurrency scheme with great passion, and laughed in all the right places and kept one eye on the far end of the room, where Lucas stood alone by the drinks table with a glass of something amber and the posture of a man who would rather be anywhere else.

He wore a plain black shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. The string lights painted his forearms gold. I noticed that and then immediately hated myself for noticing.

"Ten minutes," the system said.

"Until what?"

"Until I begin to hum."

"You would not."

It began to hum. It was a cheerful little tune, off key, and it burrowed into my brain so deeply that I excused myself from the crypto man and crossed the room on legs that did not feel like mine.

Lucas did not look up as I approached. He kept his eyes on the glass in his hand, but I saw his shoulders change, a small tightening, the way an animal goes still when a shadow crosses the grass. He knew I was there. He always knew.

I stopped at the table and picked a point just beside his hand. The plan was very simple. Reach, brush, apologize, leave.

"Fingertips only," I muttered under my breath. "Tiny. Accidental. He won't even notice."

I reached for a cup at the exact same moment he reached for the bottle, and our fingers touched. It lasted one second, maybe less. His skin was warm. His knuckles were rough and a little dry, like he spent a lot of time with his hands in cold water. A small, ridiculous current ran from my fingertips up the whole length of my arm and settled somewhere behind my ribs.

And Lucas Hale, a man who had never flinched at anything in his entire life, went completely still.

I snatched my hand back as if the table had bitten me. "Sorry," I said, and my voice cracked in the middle. "I didn't see you there."

He did not answer. He lifted his eyes at last and looked at me, and I braced for a sneer, a barbed comment, a murderous glare at the very least. But the look he gave me was nothing I recognized. It was open and unguarded and stunned, as if I had said his name in a language he thought he had forgotten.

His lips parted. For one wild second I thought he was about to speak.

Then something shut behind his face, quick and complete, like a heavy door swinging closed, and the stunned look was gone. In its place was the old cold stare, only sharper now, and it cut straight through me.

"Watch where you put your hands," he said quietly.

"Yes," I said. "Sorry. Right."

"Target affection," the system announced, delighted. "Plus one percent."

I could not breathe. I turned around and walked away so fast that I nearly knocked a tray of canapes out of a waiter's hands, and I did not stop walking until I reached the opposite end of the loft, where Anthony stood laughing with two friends from his study group.

"There you are," he said, and slid an arm around my waist. "I was about to send a search party."

I looked up at him. His face was so familiar, kind and open and easy, and I wanted to fall into it like a bed. Behind me I could feel eyes on the back of my neck, steady and heavy. I did not turn around to check. I did not need to.

"Can we go home?" I asked.

Anthony blinked. Then his smile slowed, curved, turned warm in a way that made my pulse jump for all the wrong reasons.

"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, we can go home."

I let him lead me toward the door. I told myself the fluttering in my chest was for him. I told myself the fingertips were an accident and the stunned look was a trick of the lights. I almost believed every one of them.

At the threshold I finally looked back.

Lucas was still standing at the drinks table, one hand flat against the wood, watching us leave. He did not look angry. He looked like a man who had just been robbed.